While hardly a surprise, the spin for the latest round of overnight BOJ USDJPY-buying exuberance, which sent the pair higher by another 100 pips to a fresh 7 year high of 114.500 and just over 500 pips from the Albert Edwards "line in the sand" 120 and pushed US equity futures higher with it, has been the Republican sweep in the midterm elections which not only solidified GOP control of the House but also gave Republicans outright control of the Senate.

US manufacturing both declined (PMI) and rose (ISM) in October as the divergence between the two soft-survey-based data streams is as ridiculous as it was in the second half of last year. ISM printed a cycle high 59.0 (highest since March 2011) smashing the 56.1 expectations (the biggest beat since July 2013). While the headline print was exuberant, New orders fell, as did new export orders. Construction spending fell for the 2nd month in a row, dropping 0.4% against expectations of a 0.7% rise.

But, but, but the US is the cleanest dirty short that has decoupled from the rest of the world and is the engine of global growth... right? Well with residential investment having plunged, and now manufacturing PMI slumping, we are going to need a better meme. US Manufacturing PMI printed 55.9 final for October, missing expectations fo 56.2 (for 5th month in a row), sliding to its lowest since July. Markit gingerly admits, "the latest figures indicate that the recovery has lost some intensity at the start of the fourth quarter." So, in summary, the US is decoupling from the rest of the world and US GDP is decoupling from both domestic housing and manufacturing?

While it is unclear whether it is due to the rare event that no central bank stepped in overnight with a massive liquidity injection or because the USDJPY tracking algo hasn't been activated (moments ago Abe's deathwish for the Japanese economy made some more progress with the USDJPY hitting new mult-year highs just shy of 113.6, on its way to 120 and a completely devastated Japanese economy), but European equities have traded in the red from the get-go, with investor sentiment cautious as a result of a disappointing the Chinese manufacturing report. More specifically, Chinese Manufacturing PMI printed a 5-month low (50.8 vs. Exp. 51.2 (Prev. 51.1)), with new orders down to 51.6 from 52.2, new export orders at 49.9 from 50.2 in September. Furthermore, this morning’s batch of Eurozone PMIs have failed to impress with both the Eurozone and German readings falling short of expectations (51.4 vs Exp. 51.8, Last 51.8), with France still residing in contractionary territory (48.5, vs Exp and Last 47.3).

Despite plunging consumer spending, Chicago PMI surged to 66.2 (against expectations of 60.0), its highest in 12 months. This is above even the highest economist estimate and is a 4-sigma beat... having been at one-year lows just 3 months ago.

Following misses in yesterday's Markit Service PMI, Existing Home Sales and the Dallas Fed report, and today's Durable Goods numbers, we just made it a pentafecta for misses in US econ data, when the just released August Case-Shiller data for August confirmed once again that US housing is rapidly slowing down, when the Top 20 Composite Index (Seasonally Adjusted) posted another decline in August, its fourth in a row, declining by -0.15% and missing expectations of a modest 0.2% rebound (following last month's -0.5%) decline. The best summary of the situation came from S&P's David Blitzer: "The deceleration in home prices continues... The Sun Belt region reported its worst annual returns since 2012, led by weakness in all three California cities -- Los Angeles, San Francisco and San Diego." But who cares what the birth (and death) place of every housing bubble is doing, right?

If yesterday's markets closed broadly unchanged following all the excitement from the latest "buy the rumor, sell the news" European stress test coupled with a quadruple whammy of macroeconomic misses across the globe, then today's overnight trading session has been far more muted with no major reports, and if the highlight was Kuroda's broken, and erroneous, record then the catalyst that pushed the Nikkei lower by 0.4% was a Bloomberg article this morning mentioning that lower oil prices could mean the BoJ is forced to "tone down or abandon its outlook for inflation." This comes before the Bank of Japan meeting on Friday where the focus will likely be on whether Kuroda says he is fully committed to keeping current monetary policy open ended and whether or not he outlines a target for the BoJ’s asset balance by the end of 2015; some such as Morgan Stanely even believe the BOJ may announce an expansion of its QE program even if most don't, considering the soaring import cost inflation that is ravaging the nation and is pushing Abe's rating dangerously low. Ironically it was the USDJPY levitation after the Japanese session, which launched just as Europe opened, moving the USDJPY from 107.80 to 108.10, that has managed to push equity futures up 0.5% on the usual: nothing.

It appears the cleanest dirty shirt may need some laundering. For the 4th month in a row, US Services PMI has dropped (hitting 6-month lows) and missing expectations by the most this year. The excuse for this weakness - oh that's easy -"there are clearly many concerns, ranging from worries about the impact of Ebola, the Ukraine crisis, the ongoing plight of the Eurozone , signs of further weakness in emerging markets and the Fed starting to tighten policy."

It started off so well: the day after the ECB said that despite a gargantuan €879 billion in bad loans, of which €136 billion were previously undisclosed, only 25 European banks had failed its stress test and had to raised capital, 17 of which had already remedied their capital deficiency confirming that absolutely nothing would change, Europe started off with a bang as stocks across the Atlantic jumped, which in turn pushed US equity futures to fresh multi-week highs putting the early October market drubbing well into the rear view mirror. Then things turned sour. Whether as a result of the re-election of incumbent Brazilian president Dilma Russeff, which is expected to lead to a greater than 10% plunge in the Bovespa when it opens later, or the latest disappointment out of Germany, when the October IFO confidence declined again from 104.5 to 103.2, or because "failing" Italian bank Monte Paschi was not only repeatedly halted after crashing 20% but which saw yet another "transitory" short-selling ban by the Italian regulator, and the mood in Europe suddenly turned quite sour, which in turn dragged both the EURUSD and the USDJPY lower, and with it US equity futures which at last check were red.

Why would one even look at a self-reported survey as an indicator of coincident activity: after all isn't it beyond obvious that every response will be full of confirmation bias and colored by the respondent's inherent optimism about the present and the future? Apparently it isn't, and neither is it obvious that for all business participants, hope dies last, something which always influences their responses. The problem is that in a world in which central banks have made a mockery of all other coincident signals, one has to dig very low. "We've used this measure less over the last couple of years as central banks have increasingly distorted the relationship between fundamentals and valuation" says Deutsche Bank's Jim Reid. And as Jim Reid shows in the table below, the various regional PMIs have so consistenly overshot in their expectations of where the manufacturing and service sector of a given country is throughout 2014, that not even the market believes, well, Markit.

But the world has been printing such great PMIs? And the US is the new engine of global growth? So how did US Manufacturing PMI just print 56.2, 3 month lows, and its biggest miss since August 2013? Following China and Europe's lead, US is latest PMI print with collapsing New Orders (57.1, down from 59.8, lowest since January), Output, and New Export Orders. This is the biggest 2-month drop in US PMI since May 2013.

Perhaps the most interesting question from late yesterday is just how did the Chinese PMI rebound from 50.4 to 50.2, when the bulk of its most important forward-looking components, New Orders, Output, New Export Orders, posted a material deterioration? When asked, not even Markit could provide an explanation that seemed remotely reasonable so we can only assume the headline was goalseeked purely for the kneejerk reaction benefit of various algos that only focus on the headline and nothing else. Luckily, we didn't have much time to ponder this quandary as a few hours later we got the latest batch of Eurozone PMI numbers.

The reactions in USDJPY, Nikkei 225, S&P futures, Gold, Treasury futures, and oil (in a word - none!) tells you all you need to know about the market's total loss of faith in the soft-survey-based PMI data from around the world (and in particular China and Japan). Despite dramatic weakness in a slew of hard-date economic indicators for both nations, the PMIs rose and beat. Japan's to 7-month highs (so much for moar QQE?) but New orders and Output tumbled. China rose and beat but all key components dropped. As the two charts below suggest... things in PMI data production-land need some better "adjustments" if they are to keep the dream alive...